Breaking and Fixing Destructive Code Read Defenses
Jannik Pewny, Philipp Koppe, Lucas Davi, and Thorsten Holz

TL;DR
This paper reveals that destructive code reads (DCR) can be bypassed even with high-entropy code randomization and introduces BGDX, a new byte-granular memory protection technique combining DCR and execute-only memory to defend legacy binaries effectively.
Contribution
The paper demonstrates the vulnerability of DCR against code inference attacks and introduces BGDX, a novel, efficient mitigation method that combines DCR and XOM for legacy binaries.
Findings
DCR can be bypassed regardless of code randomization.
BGDX effectively protects legacy binaries against code inference.
BGDX incurs only 3.95% performance overhead on SPEC benchmarks.
Abstract
Just-in-time return-oriented programming (JIT-ROP) is a powerful memory corruption attack that bypasses various forms of code randomization. Execute-only memory (XOM) can potentially prevent these attacks, but requires source code. In contrast, destructive code reads (DCR) provide a trade-off between security and legacy compatibility. The common belief is that DCR provides strong protection if combined with a high-entropy code randomization. The contribution of this paper is twofold: first, we demonstrate that DCR can be bypassed regardless of the underlying code randomization scheme. To this end, we show novel, generic attacks that infer the code layout for highly randomized program code. Second, we present the design and implementation of BGDX (Byte-Granular DCR and XOM), a novel mitigation technique that protects legacy binaries against code inference attacks. BGDX enforces memory…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSecurity and Verification in Computing · Diamond and Carbon-based Materials Research · Advanced Malware Detection Techniques
